Re:Gender works to end gender inequity by exposing root causes and advancing research-informed action. Working with multiple sectors and disciplines, we are shaping a world that demands fairness across difference.

Population & Reproductive Rights

Reproductive rights are the cornerstone of women’s health and independence. These include the right to voluntary marriage; the right to determine the timing, number and spacing of children; and freedom from sexual violence and coercion. Women in the U.S. and around the world encounter numerous obstacles to making fully informed reproductive choices, including lack of information and access to comprehensive services, prohibitive costs, cultural and societal taboos and customs, and poorly trained or ideologically compromised healthcare providers. Many of our member centers are conducting research, disseminating information and raising awareness about women’s health and health policy issues.

Jennifer Buffettis a member of the ICRW Leadership Council, a team of high-profile visionaries helping to advance ICRWs mission to empower women, achieve gender equality and fight poverty in the developing world. Each understands the important role ICRW plays in showing that investing in women and girls creates sustainable social and economic change. They know that when women and girls have the confidence to reach their full potential, their families, communities and countries prosper.

The National Council for Research on Women in partnership with the US National Committee for UNIFEM presentStrategic Imperatives for Ending Violence against Women: Linkages to Education, Economic Security and HealthJune 11-12, 2010Hunter College, CUNY, West Building, New York City

Hosted ByThe Women and Gender Studies Program and Roosevelt House,Hunter College, CUNY (City University of New York)

Jane Roberts, the woman behind 34 million friends of UNFPA, gave a special interview on Chicago Public Radio for International Women's Day. "Gender inequality is the moral scourge of the age," said Roberts. Due to gendercide, sex-selective abortion, and other human rights atrocities, there are 100 million missing girls in the world. To listen to the interview, click here. As Roberts said, "when the world takes care of women, women take care of the world." I think that's something we can all get behind!

Although most of the governments in Latin America today are described as progressive, abortion is only legal in one country, while in five countries it is banned under all circumstances, even when the mother's life is at risk. Such laws have simply forced the practice underground, making unsafe abortions the second leading cause of maternal mortality in the region.

Editorial:

There are more than four million illegal abortions a year in the region, linked to over 4,000 avoidable deaths. And in some countries, like Argentina, there are nearly as many abortions as births.

In the view of some analysts, setbacks to or the lack of progress with respect to women's right to choice are the result of a fundamentalist offensive by the Catholic Church to keep Latin America a land free of abortions - legal ones, at least.

Rita Segato sees the negotiation over women's bodies in the criminalisation of abortion as linked to the problem of gender violence in the region, which is "huge" despite the fact that the Americas has the only continent-wide treaty on violence against women.

Women are missing in their millions—aborted, killed, neglected to death. In 1990 an Indian economist, Amartya Sen, put the number at 100m; the toll is higher now.

Editorial:

The destruction of baby girls is a product of three forces: the ancient preference for sons; a modern desire for smaller families; and ultrasound scanning and other technologies that identify the sex of a fetus. In societies where four or six children were common, a boy would almost certainly come along eventually; son preference did not need to exist at the expense of daughters. But now couples want two children—or, as in China, are allowed only one—they will sacrifice unborn daughters to their pursuit of a son